


Girl of Steel

by rosa_acicularis



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_acicularis/pseuds/rosa_acicularis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a blonde!" </p><p>Rose Tyler has superpowers, a secret identity, and a really uncomfortable pair of tights. Remind you of anyone?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl of Steel

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a crossover so much as a demented sort of AU. What I know about Superman could fit in a wikipedia entry. In fact, it already has. Inaccuracies are to be expected, and are not intended to offend.

  
As usual, it’s the cape that gives her the most trouble.  
  
It’s wrapped around her neck like a python, and she’s half into her nylons and half out of the blue tights when the door to the ladies toilet slams open. A pair of navy three-inch pumps clicks across the floor, pausing as their owner glances under the first stall. “Tyler, I know you’re in here. You can put your feet down.”  
  
Rose is hovering somewhat awkwardly in the air over the toilet seat; after a brief internal debate, she lets her feet hit the floor with a gentle thump. “I told you, Lois — I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.”  
  
Lois snorts and leans back against the door of Rose’s stall. “Who’s worrying? I just want to know why you ran out of the newsroom like someone set your panty hose on fire. Must have been one hell of a story.”   
  
Rose rolls her eyes and gives the cape another tug — damned thing always gets twisted up in her blouse whenever she has to make a quick change. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I told you I wasn’t on a story.”  
  
“I don’t suppose I would.” There’s a crackle of cellophane from the other side of the stall door as Lois unwraps a stick of nicotine gum. “Well, my lovely little limey, while you were out and about Metropolis _not_ doing your job, I was covering the bank robbery down on 85th.”  
  
Rose goes still, her fingers pausing over the zip of her skirt. “No kidding.”  
  
“No kidding. Though what kind of moron robs a bank in this day and age, I don’t know.” Lois cracks her gum. “A traditionalist, I guess. No one else appreciates the classics anymore.”  
  
Rose swallows. “Lois–”  
  
“ _She_ saved the day, of course. Swooped in at the last possible minute and bagged the baddies in a blur of red, blue and blonde. Jimmy tried to get a decent picture, but she was moving too fast.” Lois pauses. “Almost like she was in a hurry to get back to something.”  
  
For a moment, Rose doesn’t breathe. Then she slips her arms through the sleeves of her suit jacket, pulls her skirt straight, and says in a perfectly even voice, “Maybe she was late for a dentist appointment or something. Even superheroes have to get their teeth cleaned.”  
  
“I swear, Tyler, you have the imagination of an old boot.” Lois sighs and pushes away from the stall door. Rose hears her spit her gum into the bin by the sink. “You gonna be in there forever, or are we going to lunch? I’m starving.”  
  
Rose turns the lock and lets the door swing open. “Lois, these bank robbers — did they try to take anything out of the safe deposit boxes?”  
  
A slow, cunning grin spreads across Lois’s narrow face. “According to my source only one box piqued their interest. You want to know whose?”  
  
Rose steps up to the sink and washes her hands, letting the water run hot. “Of course.”  
  
“What a coincidence — so do I.”  
  
Rose smirks as she shakes her hands dry. “A working lunch, then?”  
  
“I thought you’d never ask.” Lois watches Rose walk to the door; she doesn’t follow. “Tyler?”  
  
Rose turns, her hand on the doorknob. “Yeah?”  
  
“You forgot your glasses.”   
  
Rose catches a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror — her dark-framed specs are still tucked in her jacket pocket. She slips them on, carefully avoiding Lois’ eyes. “I’d wondered why you seemed so blurry all of a sudden.”  
  
Lois steps in close. “Do I seem a bit sharper now?”  
  
Rose nods, her mouth dry. “As a knife.”  
  
“Good.” She pats Rose on the back, and the quick movement of her fingers smoothes the still-twisted cape trapped under her clothes. She grins. “I have a feeling about this one, Tyler. This one is going to be big.”  
  
++  
  
As a general rule, Rose is pretty strict about the secret identity thing.  
  
Mickey had been the exception, but she’d been young and sort of shockingly stupid, and she’d figured that if she was just going to up and disappear to America, her boyfriend at least deserved an honest explanation. So one night she bought him a large pepperoni pizza from the shop around the corner, sat him down on the sofa and said, “Mickey, I have to tell you something.”  
  
“Holy fuck,” Mickey said. “You’re pregnant.”  
  
“No,” she said, shuddering. “God no, definitely not.”  
  
Mickey did not look relieved. “Then you’re breaking up with me.”  
  
“Mickey, I’m not–” She took a deep breath. “Look, I’m sorry I never told you, but I’m an alien from the planet Krypton and I have superpowers.” She paused. “I’m going to use them to fight crime.”  
  
Mickey stared at her. “Is that meant to be metaphorical or something?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Oh,” Mickey said. “Okay.” He stood up, then immediately sat down again. “All right,” he said. “What kind of superpowers?”  
  
Rose shrugged. “I don’t know, Mick. The usual kind.”  
  
He folded his arms across his chest. “Well, can you read minds?”  
  
She frowned. “No.”  
  
“Turn invisible?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Control the weather?”  
  
She brightened for a moment. “I can blow really cold air and freeze things.”  
  
Mickey raised an eyebrow. “Not the same though, is it?”  
  
“I’m _invulnerable_ , Mickey. I have fists of steel.”  
  
“Explains why your hands are always so cold.”  
  
She gently shoved him off the sofa. “You think I’m making this up.”  
  
Mickey chuckled. “No, I think you’ve gone stark raving mad. Either that or you’ve just come up with a really clever way to throw me over.” He frowned. “I’m not sure which explanation I’d prefer, actually.”  
  
“Mickey?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Watch the pizza box.”   
  
She hadn’t got much practice with her heat vision since that incident with her mum’s curtains when she was nine, but that day she managed to burn a gaping hole in the pizza box without setting the flat on fire. Much. Mickey’s dumb-founded expression was well worth the risk.   
  
“Whoa,” he said. “You — _whoa_.”  
  
“I can fly, too,” Rose said. “At least, I think I can. At the moment I just sort of hover.”  
  
There was a silence. Then, slowly, Mickey grinned. “So then, Girl of Steel — how do you feel about capes?”  
  
++  
  
Rose leaves Lois in the newsroom, happily badgering people over the phone. They’ve yet to get a name for the safe deposit box, but it’s only a matter of time; Rose has found that when Lois goes into human battering ram mode, tongues tend to loosen pretty quickly.  
  
Rose leaves her to it, buys a hot dog from Lenny’s cart on 75th and walks the ten blocks to the First Metropolitan Metropolis Bank. It’s a grand old building with marble steps and a long, shadowed colonnade; Rose sits on a low step and finishes her hot dog, waiting for the sun to set behind the gleaming Metropolis skyscrapers.  
  
Whoever’s coming to steal that deposit box isn’t going to show until well after dark.  
  
The bank closes, leaving two understandably jumpy security guards alone in the empty building. She glances over her shoulder every minute or so, sweeping the bank with her X-Ray vision _(which she’s always used quite responsibly, no matter what Mickey might claim)_ , but there’s nothing to see.  
  
Hours pass. The streetlights blink on.  
  
Rose thinks about work, about her electric bill, about her latest transatlantic row with her mum. She watches the passersby, tries to guess their secret passions and bad habits. Then, when the sea of commuters thins to a trickle, she picks up one of the city’s free weeklies from a nearby bench and opens it to the cover story.   
  
_Metropolis’ Dowdy Darling_ , the headline reads. _Why Does Our Superhot Superchick Hide Those Thighs of Steel?_ Beneath the headline are two pictures — one a blurred photo of Rose in her usual blue tights and leotard, the other an artist’s rather extreme reimagining of her costume with a red miniskirt and a skintight, midriff-baring blue top.   
  
Rose studies the drawing. “My breasts do not do that,” she says. “They just don’t.” She holds the newspaper closer, frowning. “Honestly, I don’t think anyone’s can.”  
  
She glances at the cover page of the weekly — it’s owned by a subsidiary of LexCorp. She tosses it into the nearest bin, and feels only the slightest guilt for not having recycled it.  
  
Nearly two in the morning and still no sign of her bank robbers. It’s enough, Rose thinks, to make a superchick feel downright jilted. She considers heading back to the Planet; Lois would’ve phoned if she’d got anything good, but there’s no harm in checking in, maybe having a cup of coffee or raiding the break room fridge for interesting leftovers. Her stomach growls at the thought.  
  
Then something in the distance starts to beep.  
  
It could be anything, but her first thought is _bomb_ and she tenses, listening as hard as she can. It’s moving closer, quickly, and she can hear a single set of footsteps moving with it. The beeping gets faster and faster, closer and closer, and Rose is poised to leap into the air when a skinny man in a suit appears from around the corner, walks up to the steps, and stops just at her feet. His eyes are fixed on at something cupped in his hands, a small glowing machine that looks like an awkward sort of hybrid between a mobile phone and an Etch-A-Sketch. The machine beeps one last insistent time, then goes silent.  
  
The man looks up at the bank. “Huh,” he says. “Not what I was expecting.”  
  
Rose crosses one leg over the other. “Sorry to disappoint.”  
  
The man blinks down at her, looking faintly surprised. “Hello. You’re not a lump of radioactive alien ore, are you?”  
  
“I’ve been called worse.” She leans forward, arching her neck for a better look at the machine in his hands. Her glasses slide down her nose, and she pushes them up again. “Nice. Is that a homemade GPS tracker?”  
  
“Well, it’s a similar enough device in theory, but I’ve modified a number of–” He stops. “Yes. Yes, that’s it exactly. I’m tracking things. With satellites. Nothing remarkable about that, is there?” He bends down, sniffing the air just in front of her mouth. “Is that one of Lenny’s hot dogs?”  
  
“It was,” Rose says. “Then it was dinner, and soon–”  
  
“No need to need to share the full travelogue.” He squints at her. “You know, you look strangely familiar.”  
  
Rose pushes him back from her face with a finger on his chest. “Maybe I am. You’re from London, aren’t you?”  
  
“If I’m from anywhere.” He spins and plops down beside her on the marble step. “So, vaguely familiar person, about two weeks ago an unusually large meteorite crashed into the Australian Outback.”  
  
“I know.”   
  
“You know?”  
  
“I’m an intrepid girl reporter. I know all sorts of things.” Also, she’d been the reason the meteorite hit an uninhabited hillside in the Outback and not North Sydney. She crosses her arms over her chest. “Let me guess: inside this meteorite local scientists found a lump of radioactive alien ore.”  
  
He grins. “Extraordinarily dangerous radioactive alien ore.”  
  
“The very best kind.” She taps a finger against her teeth, considering. “You know, this bank was robbed yesterday morning.”  
  
The man pauses. “Really.”  
  
“Our local hero in tights apprehended the perps and their loot before they could make a getaway. They were just hired goons, not a mastermind in the bunch; aside from the cash, all they took was–”  
  
His eyes widen in understanding. “A safe deposit box.”   
  
“A safe deposit box now safely back in the bank.” She glances over her shoulder and watches as the security guards make their rounds. “For the moment.”  
  
The man stares at her, and she fidgets a little under the unapologetic intensity of his gaze. “You think whoever hired the first team of goons has hired another, and you’re waiting to catch them in the attempt.”  
  
Rose raises her chin. “Wouldn’t you?”   
  
“That,” the man says, “is a very good answer.” He shoves the tracker into his pocket and holds out his hand. “I’m the Doctor.”  
  
She shakes it. “Rose Tyler.” His hand is a little cold, and he has calluses in odd places. She lets go quickly when she realises that he’s analysing her grip as carefully as she’s analysing his. “So here’s a question for you, Doctor — if your tracker is right and this extraordinarily dangerous radioactive alien ore is inside the bank, how’d it get there?”  
  
The Doctor smiles. “Ironically enough, it was stolen.”  
  
“From the Australians?”  
  
“From the man who bought it from the Australians. It was meant to be shipped to him here in Metropolis, but it was stolen before it arrived.” The Doctor scratches the back of his neck, frowning as he remembers. “The man who bought it was some American industrialist, what was his name–”  
  
“Lex Luthor.”  
  
He snaps his fingers. “Yes, that’s the one. Funny sort of name — don’t think I’ve ever heard of him before.”   
  
Her lips twitch in distaste. “Don’t see how you could’ve missed him. He’s the frontrunner in this autumn’s senate race, and he owns about half the city.”  
  
“You’re not a fan.”  
  
Rose smiles, showing teeth. “You might say that, yeah.” Out of the corner of her eye, Rose looks for the security guards. Then she looks again, longer, and sees four men where she should see two. “Doctor,” she says slowly, “this extremely dangerous radioactive alien ore of yours wouldn’t happen to be green, would it?”  
  
He raises an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure it was ore-coloured, actually.”  
  
“Good to know.” She jumps to her feet. “I have to pee. You should wait here and, you know, stay very still.” She turns to run to the nearest alley, then stops and turns back. “And quiet. You should definitely be quiet.”  
  
He stands. “Rose–”  
  
“I really have to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.” She runs as fast as a human woman of her size reasonably could until she’s out of sight, and then she blasts through the alley, shedding clothes, and slams through the side entrance to the bank. She shrieks to a stop right in front of two men wearing stockings over their heads. One of them has a black safe deposit box tucked under his arm.  
  
They both have guns pointed at her chest.  
  
“Shit,” Thug Number One says. “It’s the Superbitch.”  
  
“Wow,” Rose says, “I feel really demeaned now. I’m going to have to write an entry about this in my feelings journal.” She disarms them, knocking them both to the floor and neatly snatching the deposit box from Thug Number Two’s beefy arms. “But then again, maybe I can save those pages for something a little more substantive. Dropping you off at the nearest precinct might be catharsis enough.”  
  
Thug One whimpers.   
  
“Well,” the Doctor says from behind her, “it seems as if you don’t need my help after all.” He leans against the cracked door frame and tucks something that looks like a pen into his jacket pocket. “I like the boots, but the cape’s a bit much, don’t you think?”  
  
++  
  
There’s a brief debate over what they should do with the safe deposit box.  
  
“We’re handing it over to the police,” Rose says. “There. End of discussion.” She lifts into the air, and the Doctor grabs her foot. She could easily shake him off; instead she rolls her eyes and drifts back down to the alley pavement.   
  
“Rose, if you hand this ore sample over to the police you’ll only be passing it back to whomever stole it from Luthor in the first place and giving Metropolis’ favourite evil genius another opportunity to steal it in the second place.” He frowns. “Fourth place? I’ve begun to lose track.”  
  
She waves the deposit box in the air. “How can you be so certain the ore is even in here? It’s just a bloody box!” A lead-lined bloody box, as it turns out. She’d already tried to peek.  
  
The Doctor pulls the tracker from his pocket and pushes a button; it beeps so shrilly that she stumbles back, trying to cover at least one of her ears with her free hand. He hits the button again and the tracker goes silent. “Any other questions?”  
  
Rose scowls at him. “Fine then. What do _you_ suggest I do with it?”  
  
“Well, you should give it to me.” He pauses, straightening his tie. “Obviously.”  
  
“You’ve got to be joking. For all I know, you’re the bloke who stole it in the first place.”  
  
“Second place.”  
  
“No, I mean the first place.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure you don’t.”  
  
“And I’m pretty sure you’re about to spend the night in lockup with these upstanding gentlemen.” At her feet, a bound would-be bank robber groans. She steps closer to the Doctor, rising a few inches into the air so she gains the advantage of height. “Why should I trust you, Doctor? You won’t even give me your real name.”  
  
He looks up into her face for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then he holds up a finger. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.” He stalks away, hands jammed in his pockets, and disappears around the corner.  
  
Rose stares after him, glowering in midair. “He must be mad,” she mutters. “Some skinny idiot in sneakers telling me how to do my job. I’ve been wearing the tights since I was twenty; I hardly need advice from a geek with a funny mobile.” She looks down at the hired goons. “Ridiculous, isn’t it?”  
  
Thug One coughs into the asphalt. “Yeah. Ridiculous.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Thug Two says, his voice a little muffled by the stocking over his face. “The guy may have a point. Luthor’s pretty determined to get his mitts on whatever’s in that box.”  
  
“Ah ha!” Rose says, dropping down to the ground. “So it _was_ Luthor who hired you to steal the ore in the third place.”  
  
“Second place,” Thug One mumbles.  
  
“Oh, shut up.” Rose crouches by Thug Two, setting the deposit box down on the asphalt beside her. “Could you testify to that in court? I have a friend in the DA’s office who’s been trying to get Luthor for ages; she might be able to make you a deal.”  
  
Thug One laughs, the sound low and harsh enough to make her throat ache. “You morons. We’re not going to make it to the cops, much less in front of a judge. Luthor might be a freak, but he’s not stupid.”  
  
Which is when Rose hears the soft snick of a gloved finger on the safety of a sniper rifle.   
  
In less than a heartbeat she’s on the roof of the bank, and the sniper is nearly within her reach when he fires — not a bullet, but a wire net that clings to her arms and legs, searing into her skin as she tries to rip herself free. She careens over the roof ledge and falls, helpless and burning under the net’s impossible weight. She hits the alley pavement with a bone-crunching thud.  
  
A few feet away, Thugs One and Two lie still, a single neat hole in each of their stocking-covered foreheads.   
  
It’s one minute, maybe two before the sniper reaches the alley. He’s a shadow dressed in a sharp black suit and tie, a nylon stocking fitted over his head. He picks up the deposit box without so much as a glance at the bodies, and for a moment he stands over her, watching her writhe under the touch of the wire. He seems to be smiling.  
  
Then there’s a sound like a piano falling slowly down a flight of stairs, and he gives her a jaunty salute before disappearing into the night.  
  
The mysterious sound grows louder, then slowly fades into silence. She hears a door open, and then footsteps — she turns her head and sees the Doctor walking toward her, his face like stone. A tall blue box looms in the alley behind him, the words _Police Box_ shining white in the dark.  
  
Her mouth is corpse dry; she licks her lips and says, “Good timing.” It comes out as a groan, and she tastes blood at the back of her throat. He kneels at her side and pulls the pen that isn’t a pen from his jacket pocket. He touches it to the wire clinging to the skin of her neck; it gives a soft whir and she can breathe freely for the first time in long minutes.  
  
“I was only gone for about sixty seconds, my time,” the Doctor says, his voice low. She watches the tension in his thin shoulders as he reaches around her, gently pulling the net away piece by piece — from her face, her hands, the small of her back. “Something forced the TARDIS off course. Only by a few minutes, but–” He looks over his shoulder, at the bodies. “I’m sorry.”   
  
When he tosses away the last piece of the net she pushes herself up and hugs her knees to her chest, still shuddering. “We–” She coughs, clearing her throat. “We need to dispose of the pieces. There’s enough of this stuff lying around the city as it is.”  
  
The Doctor pulls a pair of glasses from his pocket; he slips them on and begins to study a chunk of net, scanning it with the pen’s blue light. “Fascinating stuff.” He pauses, then gives the wire a quick lick. “Hmm, lovely. Xenon with just a hint of plutonium. Never seen anything quite like it.”   
  
Rose gulps. “If you do that again, I will vomit on you.”  
  
His expression turns serious again. “How long do the effects last? Do you need some sort of treatment?”  
  
“The farther away I am, the better I’ll be.” She staggers to her feet. The Doctor rises and offers her his hand; she doesn’t take it. “The bodies, we can’t just — we need to phone the police.” She pats down her leotard, searching for a pocket that isn’t there. “My mobile–”  
  
“Is with your clothes in the TARDIS,” he says, tipping his head in the direction of the blue box. “We’ll phone from there.”   
  
She rubs her hands over her face and feels as if she’s swaying, back and forth and back until she’s leaning into him, her shoulder against his chest. He feels surprisingly solid, if a bit bony. She closes her eyes. “A net laced with synthetic Kryptonite, can you believe it? I bloody hate that bald bastard.”  
  
He leads her toward the blue box, carefully stepping around her unsteady feet. “I assume we’re talking about Lex Luthor.”  
  
She nods into his suit jacket. “He’s sort of my nemesis.”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
“You know the type — Oedipal complex, dreams of world domination, wears suits worth more than the GNP of most small countries. Dies at least once a year, but it never seems to stick.”  
  
The Doctor loops an arm around her waist as he pulls a key from his pocket and unlocks the blue box. The door swings open. “Step up,” he says, and she does.  
  
“Wow,” she says, staring. “It’s–”  
  
He sighs. “I know.”  
  
She pinches his arm. “Don’t be rude.” She stumbles up the steps, toward the central column. It shines with a faint green light, giving the domed room an eerie underwater glow. She runs her fingers along the curve of the console. “It’s a ship.”  
  
He stands at the top of the stairs, watching her. “Yes.”  
  
“An alien ship.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
She turns to him. “You’re alien.”  
  
“That a problem?”  
  
She laughs a little, covering her mouth. “No,” she says, smiling under her hand. “Not really.” She sinks to the grated floor, her head falling back against the console. “I should really put my clothes back on. My glasses.” She lifts her head. “Where are my glasses?”  
  
“You don’t need them.”  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Rose–”  
  
“I don’t need them to see, but I need them. I do.” She sees her clothes hanging from one of the coral struts; they seem awfully far away. She sighs and lets her head fall forward into her hands. “I’ll be fine in a few minutes. I just need to sit.”  
  
“You are sitting.”  
  
She looks at him through one narrowed eye. “Quite the smart arse, aren’t you?”  
  
He rubs the back of his neck, his thin face solemn. “I don’t mean to be.”  
  
“I doubt that.” She frowns. “Stop looking so serious. I’m fine.”  
  
“You were poisoned.”  
  
“I’m invulnerable.”  
  
“Obviously not.” He leans back against a curved coral strut, his hands in his pockets. For a long moment he watches her, not saying anything. “Where are you from?”  
  
“London.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant.”  
  
“I know.” She closes her eyes. “It was called Krypton. It doesn’t exist anymore.”  
  
There’s a silence. After a moment she hears his shoes against the grated floor as he walks towards her, feels his arm brush hers as he sits by her side. “Neither does mine,” he says.   
  
She opens her eyes and leans into him slightly, shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee. “What was it called?”  
  
His jaw tenses. “Gallifrey,” he says. “It was called Gallifrey.” His hand is clenched into a fist on his thigh; she touches it, hesitantly, and his fingers uncurl until he holds her hand, his skin cool against hers. A small smile touches his lips. “Earth’s not so bad, though,” he says. “Most days.”  
  
“Yeah,” she says, watching their entwined hands. “Most days.”


End file.
